A Candle
by Beeezie
Summary: "You've said three things in the last five minutes that I found genuinely surprising, the least significant of which was telling me to pin you down on your bed while we make out. Stop calling me a prat for reacting to all of it." Part of my Sidenote: Drastoria one-shot series.


I'd gotten to know Draco Malfoy quite well since the war had ended, and I'd never known him to be predisposed toward being particularly cheerful, but when he arrived at my door on Thursday evening, he was practically whistling.

I didn't immediately let him in; he'd recently decided that 'anyone who isn't as thick as Millicent fucking Bulstrode' could have figured out that he was dating me if they were paying enough attention, and now he was insisting on identity checks every time one of us arrived on the other's doorstep.

I'd always been one for security - the charmed bronze chain tethering my door to the wall until I lifted the spell holding it in place predated my friendship with him, as did the deadbolt I threw when I was home - but the identity check seemed a little like overkill to me. That said, there really _had_ been a fair number of people who'd actually tried to kill him since the war, a few of whom had done so in my presence, and there'd been other "credible threats" - he'd been hiding out from werewolves in a cottage on the sea the first time we'd kissed - so upon further reflection, it wasn't necessarily the massive overreaction it had initially appeared to be.

And it was also vaguely comforting to think that Voldemort's supporters disliked him enough at this point that they might come after me to get at him, since I still hated Death Eaters and I still wasn't particularly thrilled that my boyfriend had been one at one point, even if he had reformed in the several years since then.

"Where were we when I first told you I wanted to kiss you?" he asked as soon I cracked open the door without removing the chain.

"You're smiling. A lot. Who are you and what have you done with my boyfriend?"

"Astoria."

I sighed. "Some cottage. When did we first have sex?"

He snorted. That was a new one - he'd been on me to change them around more often. "Nice one. Never."

I closed the door and waved my wand. The bronze chain slid off the door to dangle against the wall, and the spell dissipated. I yanked open the door. He was already unzipping his jacket when he stepped inside, and he tossed it onto the chair I kept near the door, because I didn't have a coat rack and didn't much want to buy one.

Coat racks were for proper adults, and I was definitely not a proper adult yet.

There were butterflies in my stomach, which was stupid. This relationship wasn't new enough for there to still be quite this many butterflies.

He'd pushed the deadbolt back in place and was just pulling off his gloves when my mirror spoke. "Red eyeshadow should be illegal," it told him snidely. "She spent ten minutes putting it on."

I didn't even bother to sigh. At this point, I was prepared for my mirror to insult me. I probably should have replaced it ages ago with one that would shut up, but at this point, the mirror was like a creaky stair that you'd learned to skip if you didn't want anyone to hear you - equal parts annoying and nostalgic.

And anyway, it didn't really embarrass me anymore, largely because I'd realized that Draco and the mirror had diametrically opposed opinions on what was attractive.

True to form, he rolled his eyes at the mirror, stepped away from it, and wrapped an arm around my waist. "You look great," he said as he leaned down to kiss me. When his lips touched mine, one thing was very clear: the butterflies in my stomach strongly disagreed with me about what the appropriate number of butterflies at this stage of the relationship was, and they were intent on getting their way. "You know, red really has grown on me," he murmured when he pulled away. "It's your fault."

I grinned at him. My affinity for red had become a running joke, in a large part because I'd nearly been sorted into Gryffindor - and, as Draco had acknowledged on multiple occasions, it wasn't all that long ago that the knowledge that he'd eventually be dating a half-Gryffindor blood traitor would have filled him with genuine horror, whether or not I'd eventually landed in Ravenclaw. "Seriously, though, why are you so happy?"

It took a little while to drag it out of him, but once I'd gotten him into my bedroom, he seemed to decide that he was more interested in kissing me than playing coy, especially since he knew me well enough at this point to know that I wasn't going to drop it.

"You know how you told me I should learn to break the Imperius Curse?" he said, kicking his shoes off. "Well, I finally talked to Potter about it."

Being two years below them in school and in neither of their houses, I hadn't been a direct witness to all that much of their animosity, but everyone had _known_ about it. It was still distinctly strange to hear Draco Malfoy talk about Harry Potter as though they were at least sort of friends - and even stranger to know that they were. "And?"

"And now I can."

I sank onto my bed. "So wait, you're telling me that you had _Harry Potter_ cast the Imperius Curse on you?" I _had_ thought that learning to break it would be good for him - he'd had it used on him in the war just like I had, and the possibility of it being used again had been causing him anxiety lately, especially in terms of our relationship - but I hadn't really expected him to go directly to Harry Potter for help.

"Several times," he said. It was definitely him - he'd kissed me like he always did, and I doubted that anyone else would've guessed that he'd spend months dating a blood traitor if he wasn't getting laid for the trouble - but I was still having a hard time wrapping my mind around the concept. "I mean, I figured that he'd have already fucked me over if he was going to, he can't be Imperiused, and there are all kinds of things I can ask him to double check that he's not polyjuiced. Anyway, now I can break it."

"Did he ask you why you wanted to?"

"Nope. Just told me to learn faster because he had a date with Weasley." He flopped down next to me. "So that's why I'm happy. Kiss me again and make me even happier." Before I could come up with a retort, his lips were on mine and his hand was inching up the inside of my leg.

I didn't care enough about a retort to interrupt him. Instead, I let myself fall backwards, and as he climbed on top of me, I grabbed the bottom of his shirt. He grinned and hesitated just long enough for me to yank it over his head, and then he was kissing me again.

The band around his left forearm was a dark red today. I appreciated the color choice.

As soon as one of his hands slipped beneath my shirt, I pulled it off. It had been scary the first time I'd done that - my arms have a lot of scars, most from the war and some from my bad habits since then - but it had gotten easier, especially once he'd gotten over his shock and stopped staring at them.

"Your wand isn't strapped to your arm today."

"No," I agreed. I usually wore it under my perpetual long sleeves in a sheath with an easy release, so I could always access it, but now both the sheath and my wand were laying on the nightstand next to my bed. "I figured I'd just have to take it off ten minutes after you got here, anyway."

"You could've just answered the door in your underwear, then." I arched my back up to give him the space to reach around and unhook my bra. "It would've saved me some time."

"But you like undressing me."

"No, I just like you _being_ undressed." I pulled his head back down to mine, and he stopped talking.

We'd been dating for months, and we hadn't had sex yet, but given how quickly we were removing our clothing these days - and how much of it we were removing - it probably wasn't going to be long until we did.

I hadn't ever had sex before - otherwise, we probably would have done it already - and I'd never really wanted to, either. It's not that I didn't have a sex drive; I'd just never really felt the need to involve anyone else in it. I wasn't sure if it was just something innate in me that would have been the case no matter what, or if it was just that I'd come of age during the war. Since the list of people I genuinely trusted had been very short both during and after the war, kissing anyone hadn't really crossed my mind.

Maybe it was a little of both.

Regardless, at some point during the weird and semi-hostile friendship I'd developed with Draco Malfoy the previous year (which had admittedly had revolved a little too much around us both drinking more than was strictly healthy), I'd started wondering what it would be like to kiss him. Once we'd done so, I'd discovered that I quite liked kissing him, and once we'd started taking more of our clothing off, I'd discovered that I liked that, too.

Given that, it seemed to me that sex with him held real promise, and it kept crossing my mind when we were kissing.

Or when I was alone in bed.

We'd mostly moved onto cuddling (though he kept brushing his lips across my shoulders and the back of my neck) when he decided to throw a grenade into our entire dynamic. Cuddling or not, I was not prepared to hear the words "I love you" come out of his mouth.

My heart skipped a beat. "What?"

I heard the smile in his voice. "You heard me. It's okay - you don't need to say it back."

I considered that for a moment. I wasn't sure that I was ready to say that yet, even though I was pretty sure it was true, but I had to think that it would hurt his feelings if I didn't. I wasn't sure that the prospect of hurting his feelings actually bothered me enough to say it back, given that it _was_ my feelings that we were talking about, but it was still something to consider.

"You really don't," he said, before I could decide one way or the other. He was trailing one of his hands across my bare stomach now, and it was making me shiver in a very pleasant way. "We're almost naked in your bed. I know how you feel about me."

I saw the chance to change the subject and took it by rolling over and throwing my arms around his neck. "How do I feel about you, then?"

He answered with his lips and his tongue, and then he punctuated it by sliding his fingers into me.

It was just as well that he didn't use words. I liked this kind of answer better.

He'd theoretically planned on going home at the end of the evening. It wasn't difficult to convince him to stay. That was happening more and more lately, too, even when he had work the next day.

He dragged himself out of my bed just after 7:30 the following morning, grabbed some clothes out of the drawer I'd dedicated to him, and trudged toward the bathroom. After a moment, I heard my shower turn on.

Unlike him, I didn't have work that day. I was in a weird in-between place where I'd decided that I'd gotten over enough of my trauma from the war that I was probably capable of holding down a proper full-time job rather than a part-time job that coddled me because my brother was a war hero, but I hadn't actually acted on it yet.

So I didn't get out of bed at 7:30. I just kissed him goodbye when he emerged from my bathroom and extracted a promise that he'd come back that afternoon. Since I hadn't ever mobilized to put actual pyjamas on the night before and was consequently still only wearing underwear, it was not a promise that was difficult to get him to agree to.

Being alone afforded me quite a lot of time to think. That can be a blessing or a curse, and in some ways, this was a little bit of both.

Even if I hadn't said it the night before, I really was pretty sure that I _did_ love him. I still had butterflies in my stomach whenever I saw him, and he made me laugh a lot more than anyone else ever had, even before the war. While I wished he'd been on the right side of the war in the first place, I respected the lengths he'd gone to to try to make up for being on the wrong side. I loved the way he made me feel funny and pretty and irresistible, and how he was supportive without being smothering.

And while I hadn't really seen the appeal of him when we'd been in school, largely because he'd been a complete git, I could definitely see why some girls had swooned over his eyes and his cheekbones now that he was a halfway decent person - and he was undeniably good in bed, though most of them hadn't actually known that.

Deep down, there was just something unexplainable, unquantifiable, and completely unexpected that made me trust him not to hurt me - and, more importantly, to not hurt anyone who didn't actually deserve it ever again. When I thought about his face, it made my heart ache in a profoundly ridiculous way, and it made me wish that he was here.

He wasn't, though, so I eventually dragged myself out of bed and started getting ready for the day.

Early on in the afternoon, the charmed parchment we used to exchange messages when we weren't together started to emit a low glow. I tossed the Daily Prophet aside, bounced off the couch, and snatched it off the mantle above my non-Floo-networked fireplace.

Not being connected to the Floo network was a security precaution that predated Draco, too.

 _Probably getting out a bit early. Do you want to meet me for dinner before we head back?_

I leaned forward to rest the parchment on the table in front of my couch and scribbled back, _I was planning to answer the door in my underwear when you got back, but dinner works, too._

I hadn't actually been planning to do that, but there was a large part of me that found causing him genuine discomfort at work to be entertaining, especially since it usually led to particularly satisfying evenings.

It took him a minute to respond, and when he did, I laughed out loud.

 _I have a meeting with your brother in ten minutes, so thanks for that visual._

I considered my next sentence carefully, and decided to go with exacerbating the issue rather than figuring out an actual plan for dinner. _I was actually considering answering the door naked._

I could practically see him throwing his head back and staring up at the ceiling. He was probably wondering why he'd ever decided that dating me was a good idea, but he really had no one to blame but himself - he'd known exactly what I was like when he'd started kissing me.

 _I hate you._

 _Dinner sounds good. Should I meet you in Flourish and Blotts?_

After a minute, the parchment glowed again. _Yeah, I think you'd better. If I come back to get you first, I don't think we'll end up eating._ I considered making a bad joke, but before I could actually write it out, the parchment glowed again. _For the love of fuck, don't say it. I'll meet you at 4:30._ The first sentence was underlined.

I grinned. I probably deserved that.

Now that I'd spent some time thinking about it in the wake of his exceedingly-unexpected-but-probably-shouldn't-have-been declaration, I'd come to the conclusion that I did, in fact, love Draco Malfoy. Given that, I'd also decided that tonight was probably a good night to have sex with him, on the grounds that it was the soonest.

Neither conclusion seemed like something that I should write down and send to him at work, though. Instead, I got in the shower, put on my makeup (including the red eyeshadow that my mirror so disapproved of), and got dressed.

Then I went to Flourish and Blotts.

Draco was right about one thing: if anyone cared enough to pay attention, they'd definitely be able to figure out that he was dating me. He didn't actually kiss me when he found me by the magizoology section - he really _had_ become paranoid - but I'd certainly never smiled at any of my friends the way he smiled at me, and his hands were a little too low and lingered a little too long when we hugged for us to be even sort of believable as platonic.

I tended to think that no one was looking that closely at us in the first place, but I didn't push the issue. I did understand his paranoia, even if I thought that it sometimes went a little overboard, and I also knew that he didn't keep me updated with a running list of everyone who'd ever threatened to (or tried to) hurt him. He also hadn't been exaggerating or just caught up in the moment the night before - he was absolutely besotted with me, and he knew it, and I knew it, and it wasn't that hard to tell. Even my brother had picked up on it ages ago, despite very rarely seeing us together.

And besides, I didn't actually need to kiss Draco in public to drive him up the wall. One of the nice things about Draco Malfoy was that I actually didn't need to put a whole lot of effort into making him crazy. Wearing things that I liked and being generally snarky was usually enough.

From the look on his face throughout dinner, I suspected that he hadn't been able to get his mind off the mental image of me answering my door naked and was deeply regretting suggesting that we get dinner. My suspicions were confirmed when we got back to my flat; he threw his gloves across the room as soon as I opened my door, and neither of us really closed it, per se - it just slammed shut when he pushed me against it. Both of our coats dropped to the floor, and he managed to throw the deadbolt before I started kissing him. Then his hands were all over me - sliding under my shirt, playing with the button on my trousers, and fiddling with the hooks on my bra.

"Did you miss me today?" I asked in between kisses.

He pressed his body against mine, and I whimpered - he was taller than me, but the heels on my boots put us at about the same height, which had its perks. _"Yes,"_ he said. "Do you have any idea how crazy I've been all fucking day?"

I glanced down. "Some idea." He grinned, and I grabbed his hand and pulled him toward my bedroom. That door didn't close quietly, either, and somehow, both of our shirts and my bra ended up in a pile in front of it. He kicked his shoes aside first, and as soon as mine were off, he pulled me onto my bed. I felt his teeth gently nip at my neck, and I reached down the undo the button on his trousers.

"Not yet," he murmured, catching my wrists. He leaned in to press his lips against mine again, and my hands fell across the pillow above my head, still firmly in his grip. My breath caught in my throat, and he let go of me immediately and sat back up. "Sorry," he said quickly. "I don't - that wasn't intentional."

My heart was racing, but I didn't think I was frightened. I certainly didn't _feel_ frightened - the lurch in my stomach had felt exciting, not distressing.

So I stretched my arms back above my head. "Can you keep doing it anyway?"

He studied my face for a second. He was breathing heavily. Whatever he saw must have reassured him, because he brought his hand back up, spread his fingers apart, and covered my wrists. He didn't take his eyes off my face until I whimpered, and then his lips were on mine again. When I ground my hips against him, he let out a loud groan and tore his mouth away from mine. _"Fuck,_ I love you."

"I love you, too."

He froze.

"Don't be a prat," I snapped. My hips hadn't stopped moving, and it wasn't really the same if his weren't moving, too. "You _knew_ that."

"Don't call me a prat for having a reaction the first time my girlfriend tells me she loves me, whether or not I knew it!"

Objectively, that was more than fair. Neither my mind nor my body was feeling all that invested in objectivity just then. "Draco, _please."_

His grip on my wrists tightened a little, and my heart started to race. If I hadn't already decided that I wanted to have sex with him tonight, this probably would have done it. "Please what?" he asked softly. "What do you want, Astoria?"

 _"You!"_

He trailed his free hand up my side until he got to my breast. Then he was started running his thumb in a circle around my nipple, and his lips were back on my neck.

We both really needed to be wearing less clothing.

"Why -" I started to say. He bit down gently, and I let out a moan.

"What was that?" he asked, his voice still low.

"Why are you still -" His fingers brushed over my nipple, and I moaned again. I could feel his lips curve into a smile. "Why are you still wearing trousers?" I managed to gasp.

He pulled back to look at me, though he didn't stop moving his fingers. "Why? Am I making you crazy?"

"Yes!"

He brushed his lips against mine. "Good." I stuck my tongue out at him, and his grin got wider. "I love you," he said again. "Good crazy, right? And you're sure you're okay?" I felt slight pressure on my wrists. "With this, I mean?"

It wasn't something I'd really thought about before - the idea of not being in control of my own body generally gave me panic attacks - but somehow, this felt different. "Yes," I said. "Good crazy, and I'm sure I'm okay. Draco - when I said that I want you -"

He rolled his eyes, and some of the humor returned to his voice. "I know it's not in a sex way yet - I told you to stop saying that. I'm not going to forget, I'm not a dick."

"No," I said. "It is in a sex way."

He froze again. I really am very fond of my boyfriend, but he's incredibly prone to dramatic reactions. His eyes were narrowed, and he seemed to not quite trust his hearing. "Wait, what?"

"Don't be a prat. You heard me."

"You've said three things in the last five minutes that I found genuinely surprising, the _least_ significant of which was telling me to pin you down on your bed while we make out. Stop calling me a prat for reacting to all of it."

"Technically, you already reacted to-"

He cut me off. His smile was gone. "Astoria, I'm serious. Are you sure? I'm really fine with waiting."

"Yes." His bare chest was heaving, and the pressure he was putting on my wrists accented the muscles in his arm. I'd already been sure about it, but looking at him right now didn't hurt. "I really, really am."

"Fuck," he muttered, sweeping his gaze down my body. Then he let go of my wrists, jumped off the bed, and vanished into my living room.

"Where are you going?" I called after him, sitting up to start to wriggle out of my jeans. The process of putting them on and taking them off was lengthier than I probably should have considered reasonable for a pair of trousers, but I liked the way they made me look, and I also liked the way they made my boyfriend stare at my ass.

"My coat!" he yelled back. When he got back, I was still struggling with the right leg of my jeans.

"Did you fuse those with your body?" he asked, leaning against the doorway as I struggled to get my foot through the leg. He'd taken his trousers off, too. It had apparently taken him much less time than it was taking me.

I stuck my tongue out at him. "Like you don't stare at me whenever I wear them." I finally got my second foot through and tossed them to the side.

"I always stare at you," he pointed out. "But yeah. I do like them. They're just inconvenient when I'm trying to get your clothes off."

"What did you need to get from your _coat,_ anyway?"

He held up a wrapper, and I let out a snort. "Hey, there's nothing wrong with being prepared," he said, tossing it on my nightstand and climbing back into bed. "Do you have any?"

I had not actually thought that far ahead, so it was probably just as well that he had. "No."

"Good planning."

I threw myself back onto the bed, and his arms immediately circled around me and pulled me against his chest. I heard him take a breath, and before he could say anything, I said, "Let me guess. You love me."

He laughed, and I rolled over to face him. "Yeah," he admitted. I kissed him, and after a moment, one of his hands slid down to my ass. "It's true, though," he said when I broke away to take a breath.

I studied his face. He couldn't have looked more sincere. "I know. I love you, too. I just don't feel the need to say it every other sentence. Why aren't you naked?"

He sucked in his breath. After a moment, he yanked down his boxers and started kissing me again.

This wasn't the first time he'd been naked in bed with me, and I'd been naked around him before, but it never happened at the same time - one of us always at least kept our underwear on, largely on the grounds that two extremely horny people were not known for excellent decision making, and some kind of barrier was a good reminder for both of us. When he reached into my underwear to touch me, though, I reached down to pull them off.

He groaned just as I broke the kiss. "Draco, I love your fingers, but fuck me already."

He studied my face. "Astoria, are you sure this is-"

 _"Yes."_

He didn't need any more encouragement - he reached over to my nightstand to grab the wrapper. "Do you - how do you want to do it?" he asked, tearing it open.

"Get on top of me." I stretched my arms above my head. My heart was hammering so hard I could feel it in my throat. "And hold my wrists again. Like - like you were doing."

He let out a low moan, and my stomach gave a very pleasant lurch. "Are you serious?" I nodded, and his hand went back to my wrists as soon as he'd lined himself up. _"Fuck."_ He slid into me slowly, his eyes on mine.

I was expecting it to hurt. The first time he'd stuck his fingers in me, it had hurt. It didn't, though.

"I love you," he said softly. My hips rose to meet him, and when he pressed down harder on my wrists, I felt myself clench a little tighter around him. Apparently, he could feel it, too, because he let out a very loud groan. _"Fuck,_ Astoria."

I was finding that I quite liked not having my hands free - the weight he was putting on them was just enough to be a tiny bit uncomfortable, and it was a lot more thrilling than it had any right to be. "I love you, too."

He smiled. "Say that again."

For someone who was currently holding my arms down on the bed while he fucked me, he really was a sap.

When we were finished, he let me go and collapsed next to me. "Wow," he panted. "Was that as good for you as it was for me?"

I considered giving a snarky answer, even though the honest answer was yes. That didn't feel quite right, though, and I didn't think I could keep my voice steady enough to use snark convincingly, so I settled with, "Yes. Couldn't you tell?" He grinned and brushed the hair out of his eyes.

When I stretched my arms out and flexed my wrists, though, he rolled over to look at me and his smile evaporated. "Fuck," he said. "Did I hurt you?"

I shook my head. "I'm just a little stiff. I'm fine." The Draco-Malfoy-guilt-complex-grimace seemed like it was threatening to make an appearance, so I added, "Draco, it's a _good_ kind of stiff. I'd tell you if it wasn't. Don't ruin my first time with bullshit." I curled up against him, and after a moment, his arms closed around me.

"Okay," he said after a minute. "I just - I've never really done that before, so I wanted to make sure."

That piqued my curiosity a little, but this didn't seem like the right time to ask him to clarify, especially since I'd presumably have other opportunities. "Don't go home tonight."

He snorted, and after a minute, I felt him rest his head on top of mine. "I wasn't planning on it in the first place, even before you told me you wanted to fuck me."

I pressed my lips against his chest, and his embrace got a little tighter. "Good, because I think I want to fuck you again."

* * *

 _A/N: Reviews and favorites are always appreciated! If you want to read more of my Drastorias (many of which expand on things that are mentioned in this one), you can find most of them on my AP here, and you can add me to your author alert to catch the others as I post them. The most thorough collection is under a series called "Sidenote: Greengrass Stories" on HPFanficTalk's archive, but I do try to get most of them up on FFnet, AO3, and tumblr. :)_

 _Thank you for reading!_

 _\- Branwen_


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